A collaborative training effort supplemented by more than $100,000 from the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP) is allowing 25 miners at a Harlan County coal company to upgrade their skills and raise their pay by becoming mine electricians.

Half of that group—all employees of Lone Mountain Processing—recently entered the extensive 52-week “incumbent worker” training program that will prepare them to pass Kentucky’s electrical exam and earn certification as mine electricians. The remaining trainees will enter the program in May.

Incumbent worker training helps workers who currently have a job to upgrade their skills to meet an employer’s needs. This training fills a gap left by many federal job training programs, which serve only the unemployed.

The miners will participate in a combination of on-the-job training and classroom instruction provided by Lone Mountain personnel, state and federal mine-safety officials, and instructors at the Harlan Campus of Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College (SKCTC).

Crawford Blakeman, EKCEP Business Solutions manager, said the program is unique because Lone Mountain will continue to pay the miners salaries for the duration of the training, including time spent in the classroom.

Because the miners will not have to take night classes or disrupt their work schedules, the training can be completed in half the time typically required to earn state certification, Blakeman said.

“The company’s participation will satisfy the miners’ desire to work themselves into high-demand, higher-paying positions, while fulfilling its need for certified electricians at a much quicker pace,” he said. “That shows a real commitment to upgrading the miners’ skills, and it is requisite on EKCEP, as part of the workforce system, to help them do that.”

EKCEP is a federally funded non-profit agency that administers the JobSight network of workforce centers in 23 eastern Kentucky counties. At JobSight “one-stop” workforce centers, job seekers and employers can access over a dozen state and federal employment and training programs and employer services in a single location.

Blakeman said EKCEP worked to establish Lone Mountain’s training program after company officials asked for help in addressing a shortage of electricians.

In response to that request, EKCEP contributed approximately $50,000 toward the incumbent worker training program. That contribution was made from $250,000 in Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Statewide Employment and Training funds presented to EKCEP last year by Gov. Ernie Fletcher for incumbent worker training.

The remaining startup funds came from the Kentucky Workforce Investment Network System (WINS), a training incentive program administered by the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS).

“Lone Mountain contacted us because they had a need, and we brokered contact with KCTCS to facilitate this training to meet that need,” Blakeman said. “Industry clearly defined its need, and we responded.”

Blakeman said EKCEP also plans to help Lone Mountain by bringing its On-the-Job Training (OJT) program to the company. The OJT program can cover as much as one-half of the miners’ salaries during their training period.

The JobFit on-line job-matching service—another of EKCEP’s employer services—was used to gauge the miners’ skills and abilities as they entered training. The miners used the internet-based JobFit system to create detailed profiles, which were matched to the precise requirements of a mine electrician’s job. A close match greatly improves the odds that the miners will succeed as electricians.

EKCEP also secured the services of the Kentucky Dept. of Adult Education and Literacy’s “SkillMobile,” a state-of-the-art, internet-equipped mobile training center in which the miners took additional skills-assessment tests without having to leave the mine site.

Blakeman said the training program exemplifies the cooperative inter-agency partnerships that power EKCEP’s JobSight network, and shows how industry and government can work together to simultaneously serve both sides of the workforce equation.

“Sometimes the system works to really do what it is supposed to do, and that’s to help both job seekers and employers,” Blakeman said.